Harriet Rowlinson
Staff Writer
The first thing I notice is the dust that covers nearly all the contents of the studio, like a thin film marking those objects that have long been forgotten. Would Francis Bacon only use a paintbrush once before it was swallowed by the chaos? Later on I discover that this is no ordinary dust, it was actually collected and transported with the rest of the studio so that the artist’s work place could be fully recreated to the nearest particle.
The reconstruction of his studio at the Dublin City Gallery Hugh Lane is beyond comprehension. In terms of mere numbers the small unique space holds 570 books and catalogues, 1,500 photographs, 100 slashed canvases, 1,300 leaves torn from books, 2,000 artist’s materials and 70 drawings. Over 7000 of these items were carefully shipped from his studio in Reece Mews in London to Dublin where the artist himself was born. The project took three years to complete with a team of archaeologists, conservers and curators working to make sure everything was mapped out on the grid system, labeled and put onto the database. The end result is a huge privilege, to see what was only ever known to a close circle of Bacon’s friends.
In 1926 Bacon left Ireland when he was only 16 years old following a heated row with his father, who had found his son dressed in his mother’s underwear. After travelling to many cities including Berlin and Paris, Bacon finally chose London as his adopted home. It was in Mayfair where he gambled, Soho where he drank, the East End where he met the gangsters and South Kensington where he decided to paint. The studio that dissolved into disorder now stands before me, but what beauty this disorder inspired! Despite the Monets and Constables hanging in next-door rooms, visitors from around the world flock to Dublin City Gallery for this studio alone
When you first walk in you are met with a giant screen on which an interview from 1985 with Bacon is being played on a loop. You are also surrounded by quotes from the artist talking about the infamous Reece Mews studio: “For some reason the moment I saw this place I knew that I could work here. I am influenced by places, by the atmosphere of a room.”
You are then led to the back of the room where the studio lies. A long window at the entrance of the studio immediately brings you closer to the artist, as though Bacon himself has invited you in. Despite the chaos, certain objects jump out at you such as photographs of the late Lucien Freud with whom he conducted a tumultuous friendship, his trousers, shoes, a book on Velasquez and at least ten empty boxes of Krug champagne alluding to Bacon’s hard partying days.
The room is littered with the props used in his paintings. There’s a chair featured in the Triptych of Lucien Freud 1969, the circular mirror which resides on the back wall of the studio, and the hanging light bulbs and switches both of which feature in an untitled and unfinished painting c.1980-82 of a back view of kneeling figures, one of which was George Dyer – Bacon’s lover which is hung at this very gallery.
One of the reasons why I enjoy Bacon’s paintings is his use of colour, especially the use of fleshy pink tones that have become synonymous with his work. The walls and door of his studio were effectively how he decided on his palette and as he smilingly said in one interview they were “his only abstract works.” The surfaces are covered in a range of tones and textures. You can almost see his thought process right before your eyes. Materials like corduroy and towelling used for creating texture and depth to his paintings are strewn across the floor or under piles of boxes. In the video that still plays overhead I hear him bragging that he “never went to art school, thank god.”
Bacon’s relief is clear. He wanted to learn new techniques and not copy those who had come before him. He knew only too well that what to us looks like a pile of rubbish was to him useful and inspirational “This mess here around me is rather like my mind; it may be a good image of what goes on inside me, that’s what it’s like, my life is like that.” It’s hard to think that the 1976 Triptych that was allegedly sold to Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich in New York for $86.3million in 2008 could have been created from this mess, let alone how canvases of that size fitted in there.
Although we may not have Abramovich’s budget, the Dublin City Gallery has allowed us our very own piece of Francis Bacon, who, before he died in 1992, was the most expensive living British artist. I feel his studio gives a real insight into the world and mind of this complex genius, whose torment can be seen on the paintings that now reach such astronomical prices. Part of Bacon has come home, and we should feel lucky that somehow it chose us.
